How To Choose The Top AWS Certified Solutions Architect Companies

Skill Set

These AWS certified solutions architect companies come with an extensive list of skills and capabilities as a result of the extensive certification they’ve acquired. They come with hands-on experience in designing, deploying and managing cloud architecture systems on AWS that your in-house team doesn’t have access to. They can engage with consumers and assess business drives to better manipulative architectures, and they understand how certain business problems can be solved through effective, scalable and flexible cloud databases.

For your business to go out of its way to get this certification and handle these operations on your own, you would have to give up valuable time, money and resources — and you don’t have time to learn the ropes when your data is growing and data is accumulating. But these companies come with that expertise and skill set that they’ve put to use with brands for years.

Passion

Not only do these companies have the expert experience and certification that gives them an authority in cloud-based architecture, but they are also passionate about cloud-based systems and revolve their lives around these concepts and infrastructures. And engaged, passionate employees lead to better performance by 27 percent. This is not an easy field to enter into, and that means that technicians in this field have to bring a specific passion to the table that fills every aspect of their work.

Passion is vital in business — and oftentimes, it’s a worry for brands outsourcing work and looking to outside teams to perform intimate and extensive business operations. But in these situations, brands can be confident that these companies are coming with a lifelong passion for technology and innovation.

Technical Support

These databases can’t just be set up and forgotten about. They need constant maintenance, monitoring and testing. And that means that you need constant technical support to ensure your data and workflow is running at their max potential. These organizations have the team members, tools and resources to test systems for specific events and make sure everything is still running as it should be — and it takes the pressure off of you.

It’s important that you’re constantly checking and re-checking these infrastructures — there is a lot at stake, as these systems are what keeps your website running. And so you need a team of dedicated professionals who are making it their number one priority to minimize downtime.

Data Protection

Cloud data usage is rising, set to triple by 2021. That can be a problem considering the number of threats affecting it. But one job of these AWS certified solutions architect companies is the protection of data — data is valuable, and even the data that goes into keeping operations flowing can be altered, changed and messed with in a way that can have a major negative impact on your business. That’s why first and foremost, these companies are integrating systems and using tools to constantly make sure that this data is safe and protected.

Data protection is not something that should be forgotten about or underestimated. Our world is built on systems and chains of data, and the capabilities these companies possess in terms of protecting this data makes them innately invaluable.

Team

Much like any outside agency, these certified solutions architect companies come with a team of dedicated professionals have taken the course, undergone training and received a certification in this field which align them as industry leaders and experts. With this certification comes an in-depth, hands-on experience and access to innovative technologies and trends that can benefit your business. And these are teams that know how the plan and process operate, working together in an intimate and successful way.

They know how to come together to create a system and set up a database that is scalable, appropriate and based on your specific enterprise requirements. They understand your business needs and your industry needs innately and can create systems that give you the benefits you’re in need of.

Questions To Ask The Best AWS Certified Solutions Architect Companies

Performance

When it comes to cloud architect solution companies, performance matters. And understanding how your architect will build, manage, monitor and solve sudden or expected problems and obstacles is vital in understanding if they have the experience and expertise to handle your workflow.

How do you monitor performance?

What metrics are the best to monitor?

How will you prevent performance errors?

What is your plan of attack when it comes to solving these issues?

How do you manage large-scale events and sudden traffic spikes?

Cost

Cost is an important factor when it comes to taking on an outside company — especially one dealing with complex databases and systems. You know that these are in-depth infrastructures that require a lot of upkeep and maintenance, so you need to understand your budget going into things to make sure you’re affording the right about of money to keep it monitored and maintained.

How much do your services cost?

Do we have to pay more for continued management?

Do we have to pay more for extra support?

What does your contract entail?

Do your plans and pricing allow for future database growth?

Plan

Cloud-based solutions are intricate and require a structured plan of attack in their creation and management. And it’s important that you understand how these professionals plan to attack the situation and scale it to your business.

How do you design for failure?

How would you size our systems for specific situations

How would you test our systems performance and disaster capabilities?

How quickly can you prep a database for development?

How will you monitor, track and report on performance?

Security

Fifty-four percent of businesses have experienced at least one successful attack that has compromised data and IT infrastructure. Security threats are on the rise, and all online systems need an in-depth security system to prevent attack and data loss at every step of the way — from data storage to website backends and beyond. Hackers are getting stronger and smarter and so your architect companies need to plan for these situations.

What security measures will you integrate?

How regularly will you check the security of our architecture?

What are the biggest threats to our infrastructure?

Have you dealt with a data breach or attack in the past?

How have you recovered from a past hack or attack?

Experience

AWS certification has grown in popularity in recent years, so any and all experience that they have matters. It can show their expertise, their comfort with the systems and their process as a whole in creating a database that can handle the growing demands of your business and your data.

How long have you had this certification?

Do all team members have this certification?

Do you have other certifications and do you plan on getting further certification in the future?

Do you work with any other clients in our industry?

How have you helped brands and businesses grow in the past?

The Benefits Of Using An AWS Certified Solutions Architect Company

Revenue Growth

Sixty-four percent of enterprises and 68 percent of SMBs choose AWS for their cloud application needs. And one reason for that is its ability to grow revenue. Working with these companies results in major revenue growth — adopting AWS services has been shown to accelerate revenue growth and increase customer retention in remarkable ways. It affords businesses the opportunity to reach out to larger audiences and set up a system of best practices that aid in data migration and workload efficiency.

These companies are dedicated to creating robust infrastructures that are aimed at solving specific business-related problems that relate to data loads and operations. And in the long run, they can aid in stunning business growth.

Partnerships

These architect companies understand cloud computing and data storage. And they understand the nature of business partnerships and their ability to streamline business operations and push organizations toward success. Through these infrastructure implementations, these professionals can help your brand build partnerships with consumers, brands and other business teams that are tailor-made to address internal and external business operation problems through exciting strategies.

These companies know how to use this information and these systems to analyze and engage with consumers, pulling from them valuable insights that drive business goals, adapt applications and create reliable cloud-based architectures.

Strategic Planning

It pays to plan, with studies showing there is a positive link between strategic planning and business success. From the insights these companies can gather, and with the help of their intuitive and in-depth solutions and tools, these companies can create strategic and data-based plans to tackle growing business concerns and create a reliable architecture to handle any event that can hit your system. Businesses need to be ready for anything the world can throw at it, and these professionals can build systems, protocols and initiatives to fight them off and keep your business and data protected.

These architects do more than just build systems and transfer data and workloads. They think strategically and made in-depth plans for products, services, business operations and more that can put your business on the fast track to success.

Data Migration

In a world that is becoming more technical, complex and vulnerable, the migration of data is something that is being looked at as a valuable action. Data is everything in business, and for these architects, building systems and creating pathways for data to move from one database to another is an intricate and complex task — and when done correctly, it can drastically affect business operations and overall structure tenfold. They can assess applications and design reliable infrastructures that can handle the influx of data and continue to grow as your data does.

These strategies can help cut costs, streamline operations and engage with customer data in a way that is highly impactful for the future of your business. They offer tangible advantages and actionable insights that the ever-evolving modern world needs to succeed.

Business Problem Solutions

These professionals are knowledgeable and certified. They possess a skill set and years of experience that give them insights into the business world and the impact an effective cloud storage system has on overall day-to-day business. And with these, they can pinpoint specific business problems and outline avenues for solving them. They can give your business the insights and advice it needs to grow and thrive in ways you never thought possible.

With this knowledge guiding them and their past experience highlighting obvious challenges, they can create an infrastructure, test out situations and create an overall plan of attack to ensure these obstacles can be overcome.

Top Value Propositions & Differentiating Factors Of The Best Amazon Technology Companies

According to Amazon, cloud computing can be defined as, “the on-demand delivery of computing power, database storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.” Amazon’s own definition is helpful because the company is, after all, the biggest cloud computing company in the world, followed by Microsoft (Azure), IBM, and Google.

Amazon is a powerhouse when it comes to cloud services and cloud hosting, but implementing their products isn’t necessarily a simple or easily managed task. Many companies specialize in helping businesses migrate to cloud infrastructure, with specific technical proficiency in Amazon products. Below we cover the basics of AWS and offer insight into the differentiating factors of the best Amazon Web Services companies.

What Does Amazon Web Services Offer?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a suite of cloud computing products. AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon.com and its services bring in a sizable amount of the company’s earnings. Amazon Web Services offers a huge range of products to its customers.

Who Uses Amazon Web Services?

Amazon Web Services is used by many well-known companies around the world. Scalability is a key attribute of AWS and the company is quick to promote its ability to serve the needs of websites with large audiences, and major data and security demands. AWS customers include companies across the business spectrum -- from startups to enterprise, ecommerce to public sector.

A few examples of companies using Amazon Web Services to power their business include:

Netflix - One of the earliest (and most demanding) users of AWS, Netflix eventually made the decision to go “all-in” on AWS and closed their last data centers in 2015.

Pinterest- The popular image bookmarking site uses AWS to handle huge amounts of daily traffic and data.

The Financial Times - This respected business news publisher uses Amazon Redshift for data warehousing.

IMDb - The popular database site for information about everything movie and TV related uses Amazon Cloudfront as a content delivery network (CDN) to give users a powerful, fast search experience.

The Weather Company - The web’s most popular weather forecaster runs on AWS. The Weather Company’s huge amounts of data are stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Amazon Web Services Certification

Amazon Web Services offers certification to those who want to hone their skills with various products or disciplines within the platform. Amazon offers four role-based certifications that allow for certification in specific disciplines. These include: cloud practitioner, architect, developer, and operations. Each role offers increasing levels of expertise, beginning with foundational and moving to associate and, finally, professional.

There are also a handful of specialty certifications that are add-ons to the role-based certifications. Specialty certifications include big data and advanced networking.

Working with Amazon Web Services companies that employ staff with active AWS certifications is a good way to ensure the quality of work and the highest standard of execution.

Top Amazon Web Services Companies Are Active Communicators

Communication is key to success with your AWS managed service provider. Implementing many AWS products is a technical process that requires skilled experts, but the process won’t be fruitful if your team and the provider’s team are unable to communicate effectively. Proper account management ensures that timelines are adhered to and goals and deliverables are met.

Be sure to choose an Amazon partner that understands what your needs are, and will assign an account manager that can work closely with your team. Don’t underestimate the importance of culture fit and the ability to build solid relationships with your provider.

The Best Amazon Web Services Companies Act As Consultants

You may look at AWS’ long list of cloud-based services and feel you understand which ones are critical to meeting your needs, but a top Amazon Web Services company can act as a consulting partner to make recommendations that are tailored to your business (eg; whether public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud will be best). It’s wise to choose a partner based not only on their ability to execute on your demands, but on their capacity to identify challenges and present meaningful solutions. Look for AWS companies with a proven track record of consulting for other businesses, and be sure to review available case studies and contact references when the time comes.

How AWS Companies Market Themselves

Amazon has designated AWS Managed Service Provider Partners, who are certified by the company as experts. According to Amazon, “MSP Partners meet the AWS Managed Service Provider Program requirements, including a third party audit of their MSP capabilities.” Designation as an MSP Partner is a major marketing opportunity, as it means the provider will be listed in Amazon’s directory. It’s also a selling point to clients, helping to establish the provider’s legitimacy in the realm of Amazon cloud computing.

While visibility within Amazon’s directory is important, so is visibility in search results for key cloud computing terms. SEO and paid search are thus an important marketing channel for AWS companies.

Content marketing is another critical arm of the digital marketing strategies of AWS companies, as it gives them a chance to develop themselves as thought leaders in the cloud computing space. This, in turn, builds the trust and authority required to attract clients.

Takeaways

Amazon Web Services is well-respected among cloud providers, offering a huge range of powerful cloud computing products and services. Most companies, however, do not have the technical expertise required to implement and manage these products themselves. AWS companies, also known as managed service providers, can help with migration, implementation, and management.

Things to know when looking for an AWS managed service provider include:

AWS Offerings - AWS is the leader in cloud computing. The company offers products across many different categories, including compute, storage, content delivery, machine learning, and analytics.

AWS clients - Amazon Web Services has clients across many different industries, from government agencies and non-profits, to startups and tech giants.

AWS certification - Amazon Web Services offers certification in a number of different roles. Companies can also become Managed Service Provider Partners by meeting a set of requirements set out by Amazon.

Communication with your provider - Strong communication is a key differentiator to look for in an AWS company. It’s essential that you have a dedicated account manager who can communicate clearly and effectively with your team.

Consultation - Top Amazon Web Services companies act not only as technical execution specialists, but also as skilled consultants. Look for a partner that can advise your business on the best strategies to meet your needs.

Top Qualities Of The Best Amazon Technology Companies

Experience & Reputation

Migrating to the cloud can be an incredibly daunting process. That’s what prompts most companies to search for an AWS managed service partner in the first place. But if you’re going to make the transition, it’s essential to be sure that the partner you select is capable of executing the migration successfully. Top Amazon Web Services companies have years of experience and solid reputations. Be sure to ask lots of questions when you meet with prospective vendors. Have they worked with companies whose needs were similar to yours? More generally, have they done many migrations for a wide variety of clients? Beyond experience, also try to get a sense of the company’s reputation. What do people say about them online? What do the employees say on Glassdoor? Ask for references so you can speak directly to clients about what their experiences working with the company have been.

Partnership

Plenty of companies can manage a migration, but not all of them can act as strategic partners to your business. Top Amazon Web Services companies become true partners to the clients they work with. They take time to understand their clients’ needs, frustrations, and concerns, and include these as considerations for handling the migration. They will be proactive in suggesting solutions and identifying issues and communicating these back to the client. The value of a true partner can’t be overstated.

Monitoring & Support

Top Amazon Web Services companies offer round the clock monitoring and support to identify and manage issues before they become catastrophes. This level of care and attention offers peace of mind and reduces the burden on internal teams to handle monitoring. If you want to ensure that your business is supported, you should look for a vendor that will assign a dedicated manager to your account. They will act as your point person, available to answer questions and help provide solutions.

Top AWS Solution Architects

Efficient Implementation

Migrations are complex projects that take time to complete. You shouldn’t be expecting yours to take place overnight, but you should be able to count on an efficient process that takes place within a timeframe documented in your contract. Top Amazon Web Services companies work efficiently to complete migrations within a reasonable timeframe. Be sure to discuss the issue of timing early on in the selection process and be clear about any internal deadlines you’re trying to hit.

Communication

Communication is key before, during, and after a migration takes place. The burden is on the client to communicate goals and requirements clearly upfront. Once those are established, it’s on the vendor to maintain regular communication detailing progress. Top Amazon Web Services companies not only have the technical chops to execute the project properly, but they also have the communication skills to ensure everyone is able to work together harmoniously.